The expression “Who is ‘she’? The cat’s mother?” is something most native English-speaking people my age would recognise instantly. Countless times, growing up, when I referred to someone present as ‘she’ my mother (usually) would admonish me with it. Apparently, so did Mirinda’s mother.
We were discussing it last night at dinner with Nicoline. She wondered where it came from and why a cat. Naturally, I had to try and find out.
Interestingly, Jason, a millennial, had never heard the expression before, so I assume its usage is dying out. Or, to put it far more eloquently, “Despite [a] 21st-century example, we suspect that this nostalgic old expression is one more nicety of language that’s gradually fading away” (O’Connor & Kellerman, Grammarphobia).
According to many researchers, the first instance found of its use is in a play called The White Cat! by Francis Cowley Burnand, which was first produced on December 26, 1870. Described at the time of its producing as “a grand comic, romantic, operatic, melodramatic fairy extravaganza in two acts” I prefer it’s alternative title of Prince Lardi-Dardi & the radiant Rosetta.
Incidentally, the name, ‘Lardi-Dardi’ is a reworking of ‘lardy dardy’ which, in turn, became ‘la-di-da’, describing someone who is being a bit stuck up.
In a little side note, the writer, Francis Cowley Burnand, was quite the prodigious writer. His Wikipedia entry is remarkable.
But, to return to the catter at hand…the suggestion by most commentators is that the reference to a cat comes from the fact that a cat’s mother would be pretty anonymous, whereas the woman you are talking about has a name. Or a title, in the case of ‘mum’. Another suggestion is that, while a male cat is a Tom, a female cat doesn’t have any identifier other than ‘she’. I reckon that’s a good guess.
Of course, it’s not the only use of a feline in a phrase. “Cat got your tongue?” is another.
There are rumours this one is derived from the cat o’ nine tails or how cats were fed tongues in Ancient Egypt, but no-one holds these as particularly true. More likely, given it’s usually aimed at kids, it was probably some parent who owned a cat and just thought of it on the spur of the moment. And it stuck.
Actually, the Egyptian word for them, ‘quattah’, is where we get the English word ‘cat’. Which only goes to show…
Getting away from cats, another expression that my mother rather liked employing, was in response to me saying “Hey!” in order to get someone’s attention. She would always retort, “Hey is for horses, Gary Charles!” She always called me Gary Charles when admonishing me.
And ‘hey’ has nothing to do with the Swedish ‘hej’. I’m not sure what she’d say if she heard me saying ‘hej’ all over the place.
And, speaking of old familial expressions, my father would often respond to us kids asking what was for dinner with “Duck under the table!” or “Bread and pull-it!” While pull-it is obviously a play on the word pullet and duck has two meanings, I haven’t found anything online about where or why they originated. Mind you, dad was a Cockney barrow boy so, maybe from somewhere around Covent Garden.
While looking for a photo of a cat to use for this post, I came across this one, on my phone. I took it on September 8, 2017, and I had absolutely no idea whose cat it was.
A quick check back over the blog, and I discovered it was a French cat that joined us for dinner one night while we were visiting Provence. Miss Prism may have preferred her memory to a diary, but I find my blog a far better system of past retention.
